gping and Nextinspace
Charly's Column
Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, Charly has time to devote to gadgets like graphical ping tools, flashing space stations, and space walks.
Every now and then I notice tools that are useful, interesting, or ideally both, but sadly don't offer me enough material for a full-page article. This explains why there are two additions to the toolbox this month: gping [1] and Nextinspace [2].
gping
A ping variant, gping graphically displays the determined round trip times (Figure 1). Admittedly, this is not exactly a new idea, but most tools of this kind require a graphical interface, while gping does its magic on the console, making it my tool of choice when I'm logged into a server via SSH.
First I need Cargo, the Rust package manager, because gping is written in Rust (Listing 1, first line). In addition, gping needs a few more components, in particular rustc, but the package manager automatically fetches these as dependencies when you install Cargo.
Listing 1
Install gping
$ sudo apt-get -fym install cargo $ cargo install gping
Once everything is on board, it's time to set up gping (Listing 1, second line). It ends up in the ~/.cargo/bin/
directory. To use gping in a convenient way, either add this directory to $PATH
, or create a symlink to a directory that exists in your $PATH
.
Gping only supports a few parameters. IPv4 or IPv6 can be enforced with -4
and -6
respectively, while -n 10
increases the ping interval from one to 10 seconds.
Nextinspace
I like pointless but interesting gadgets and have more time on my hands than usual right now due to COVID-19. What I wanted to do was build a small model space station (e.g., made of Lego) where an LED flashes whenever the International Space Station passes over my home village. This requires a bit of software. During my research, I stumbled across Nextinspace, which didn't help me with my little project, but is interesting nonetheless. It notifies you of upcoming space-related projects around the world: rocket launches, satellite launches, spacewalks, and more (Figure 2).
Nextinspace, written in Python, can be beamed onto your device using the pip Python installer (Listing 2). If you then enter nextinspace
, the next upcoming event is output. The -v
switch brings additional information to light. Two other options help to classify the events: -l
shows only rocket launches, while -e
shows all other operations (but no launches).
Listing 2
Installing Nextinspace
$ apt update $ sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip $ pip install nextinspace
Infos
- gping: https://crates.io/crates/gping
- Nextinspace: https://pypi.org/project/nextinspace/
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
LibreOffice 7.5 has Arrived and is Loaded with New Features and Improvements
The favorite office suite of the Linux community has a new release that includes some visual refreshing and new features across all modules.
-
The Next Major Release of Elementary OS Has Arrived
It's been over a year since the developers of elementary OS released version 6.1 (Jólnir) but they've finally made their latest release (Horus) available with a renewed focus on the user.
-
KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta Is Ready for Testing
The latest beta iteration of the KDE Plasma desktop is now available and includes some important additions and fixes.
-
Netrunner OS 23 Is Now Available
The latest version of this Linux distribution is now based on Debian Bullseye and is ready for installation and finally hits the KDE 5.20 branch of the desktop.
-
New Linux Distribution Built for Gamers
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
-
System76 Beefs Up Popular Pangolin Laptop
The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
-
Nobara Project Is a Modified Version of Fedora with User-Friendly Fixes
If you're looking for a version of Fedora that includes third-party and proprietary packages, look no further than the Nobara Project.
-
Gnome 44 Now Has a Release Date
Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.
-
Nitrux 2.6 Available with Kernel 6.1 and a Major Change
The developers of Nitrux have officially released version 2.6 of their Linux distribution with plenty of new features to excite users.
-
Vanilla OS Initial Release Is Now Available
A stock GNOME experience with on-demand immutability finally sees its first production release.